Tried to Dual Boot Vista and XP (Vista Installed)

Q:Tried to Dual Boot Vista and XP (Vista Installed)

Okay, well i recently bought my new computer which came with Windows Vista Home 64 bit installed on it. I gave vista a chance until i tried to run Counterstrike on it...than i find out that vista does not work with the graphics engine counterstrike uses..and that i'd be better off with XP. So i found a good tutorial to dual boot vista and xp here;hxxp://www.pronetworks.org/forum/about88231.htmlLong story short....i found out that i didn't follow the steps correctly, and here are the mistakes i madeI installed and ran VistaBootPro on VISTA, before installing XP. Doing this, i went to the "System Bootloader" tab and chose option 1(windows vista bootloader) under 'Choose a System Bootloader to Install:' and i chose option 1 (all drives) under 'System Bootloader install options' and i hit ' Install Bootloader' THAN, i installed XP on my separate partition, rebooted, (now in XP) installed all my drivers, and installed VistaBootPro, and followed the instructions from there (REinstalled the bootloader, and ran diagnostics, found the 'earlier version of windows' and rebooted into vistafrom there i ran VistaBootPro again, ran the diagnostics, found XP, changed the name, and changed the boot drive to J: (the drive i assigned it to)i applied updates and rebootedwhen the dualboot screen came, i booted into vista, and it was fine, so i rebooted to test xpwhen i tried to boot into xp, it said that there was an error and that it could not find the /NTLDR filefrustrated, i reformatted that drive (with XP on it) and tried to install it againhowever, when i boot from disc, i get the BSOD, and it says that there is a problem with my harddrive. and that i should run CHKDSK /F...so i booted into vista and ran scans on all partitions..and found nothing

if anyone could help it would be greatly appreciatedthis is so annoying, as i just bought this new computer, and it's giving me so many problems

I am currently using Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit) and would like to play World of Warcraft however my Intel 82865g chipset doesn't have recent drivers available and it is currently incompatible with windows Vista.

So, I want to create a partition with XP installed so that the drivers will work and I can play WoW.

However, despite being able to create a partition, I cannot find a way of installing Win XP. I have tried booting from an XP CD but my PC seems to give up and move onto booting from the hard-disk instead and starts up Vista. Why can't I boot from the CD?

Does anyone know how I can successfully install XP on a separate partition with Vista already installed or am I going to have to format and do it the long way, starting with XP and partitioning Vista?

Hi there, I just recently installed Vista on a new system. Later I found out that there were a couple of programs that didn't do very well with Vista, so I'm intending to install XP alongside Vista to run those other programs.

I did read a couple of threads about the dual Vista XP boot but I stll haven't found the right information to proceed with the instalation of XP.

First batch of questions pertaining to issue 1:
On some of the threads I read it does explain how to install XP on a Vista partition that has been shrinked. It explains the installation procedure where Vista takes up 100% of the hard drive BUT NOT if the hard drive has been partitioned already (like an extra drive D partition), which mine is.

I've partioned the hard drive into C (200Gig. Vista OS), and D (120Gig).
My question is..."Can I go about installing XP, as mentioned on other threads, on to my drive D? Can I use ALL of drive D for XP, or must I shrink a portion of it to run XP? If I do shrink a portion of it for XP, what happens to the rest of D? Is the rest of D still run by Vista?

Can you recommend any sites that instruct installing XP on a Vista drive D?

Issue 2: Performance
I've read that one can go about dual booting on the same drive AND on separate drives. In terms of ram allocation, processor and graphics performance, doe... Read more

A:Dual boot Vista XP with Vista installed first.

Hello Paulo, Welcome to TSF!

Here is a very good guide to dual booting Vista? and Windows? XP.

How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first).
(Click the coloured link to be re-directed.)

I?m running windows vista service pack 1, 32-bits on my primary HD and i would like to install in my secondary windows xp pro. In this last HD i would also like to make a small partition for some backup files...

Hello all, new here, my pc config is intel quad 6600, 4gb ram, 2 320gb hd, OS is XP Pro with SP2. Okay I heard people speek highly of Vista and no so highly so I decided to give it a shot and make my own decision.XP was installed a few weeks ago and is on disk 1 50gig partition, created another 75 for E:Vista Ultimate and have 175 unallocated for now. My other drive is just for games. At first I used the remaining 250 for Vista the first time. Everything loaded fine was online with Vista was updating drivers and then I rebooted to finish the install for some drivers and the boot options never came up it booted right to XP.I looked at the partitions and it shows Vista there so I looked in XP boot.ini and it shows:

[boot loader]timeout=30default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptInI checked around and people said to add Vista to it so I did and added this:

have a bit of a problem, and im not sure if the way round iv done things was stupid or not!!

Anyway, I have my machine, with XPPro installed on, bought another H/D and installed vista 64 on it, however i installed vista with the xo drive unplugged, and i cant work out how to get an OS choice on boot!

I would like to dual boot with Ubuntu x64, but I do not know how. I have never dual booted before. I read up on how to dual boot with Vista and Xp, but that was with xp installed first which I do not have or want. I am currently running Vista Ultimate x64 on my HP dv6000 Laptop, with 2gb of ram. Also can I do a dual boot with Ubuntu x64 and have it installed on an external hard drive instead of my C drive? Thanks in advance. I have learned a ton from this forum already and I appreciate everyones desire to help.

Can someone lay to rest the deal with dual booting with vista/xp? I read and tried all the forums out there on steps how to dual boot xp with vista installed first and nothing has worked for me. I have a quad core gateway with 3gb of RAM with 500gb HD.

A:Dual boot xp with vista installed first

You need a boot agent if you inmstall Vista first like Symantec "Boot magic" that is on the Partition Magic cd.

I have vista on a 320gb hdd, and i have 7 on a 20gb drive, whe i booted up, i had the option of vista or 7, i re-formatted the 20gb wiping out 7 alltogether, but when i boot, it stilll gives me the option of vista or 7, how do i get rid of this to go staright to vista?

thanks alot guys,

A:Installed 7 with vista, dual boot selections?

no one can help? i thought it was a simple thing to remove the selection on boot,

I recently bought a Dell XPS M1210 with Vista home premium installed and I can't play any games without it being so choppy I can barely play them at all. I've heard alot of talk abot Vista being bad with games. So I'm wanting to install XP on my second logical drive, I have already downloaded VistaBoot PRO any suggestions will be appreciated.

A:Want to have XP dual boot on laptop with vista pre-installed

Have a read through the "sticky" at the start of this forum. There is quite a bit of interchange of ideas there.

Ok, I have just purchased a new hp media center pc that came preloaded with Windows Vista. I have come to find out that a lot of my programs that I use on a day to day base are not Vista compatible. I own the Pro version of Windows XP and would like to dual boot from 2 hard drives. Vista is currently located on one and I use the other for data storage. I would like to put XP Pro on my data storage hard drive. I also have a problem. I did not receive a Vista DVD with my computer so a fresh reinstall will not work. How would I go about doing this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

A:dual booting xp and vista on two hardrives with vista installed

I recently purchased a new machine on which I'm running Vista. I salvaged the hard drive from my old machine and I'm using it as an external hard drive. The XP operating system is also still installed on the old hard drive. It's connected as local disk (K). There are a number of programs on the K drive that I'd like to have access to. Of course when I go to start/all programs on the "new" computer (C drive) it's only showing me the programs that are installed on the C drive. How can I get the programs from the K drive to appear in the list? Do I have to move them individually to the C drive? Can I get them to appear selectively?

Thanks for your help and advice, Happy Holidays.

For what it's worth, I bought my new machine from cyberpower pc and I'm very satisfied with the computer and with their technical support. No problems with Vista, either. I kinda like it.

With the help of this forum and the Partition Wizard I have successfully installed Windows 7 64 bit on a separate partition (H) on my hard drive and I now have a dual boot system. The other partition (C:OS) runs Vista 32 bit OS.

The problem I have is that all my programs, files and settings are on the Vista partition. So I would like to remove Vista and merge the two partitions so that Windows 7 has access to my existing data and programs.

I have read a number of threads re merging, etc but I can't find one that specifically refers to my issue.

Your issue is a typical upgrade issue, Internet in general and our forums in particular are full of advice in how to do it. As there's no way you can transfer your installed programs to your new Windows 7 installation, you have exactly two options.

Option 1, finish what you have already started:Copy your personal files from Vista partition to respective folders on Seven partition. You can do it manually or for instance using Windows Easy Transfer. Notice that your installed programs will not work on Seven even if you copy them and their folders to SevenDelete the Vista partitionUse the free space (old Vista partition) to increase the size of the Seven partitionRe-install all your programs

Option 2, start from beginning:Do an in-place upgrade install, installing Seven on top of your Vista instead of clean install to another partition as you have done now. This option keeps all your installed programs and files exactly where there are now, no need to re-install them

Managed to install XP Pro OK as per guidelines and it boots OK either to Vista or XP. Sound OK in Vista, however, when in XP I have no sound. I'm at a loss as to what I need to do to get sound going in XP, so if anyone here can help would appreciate it very much.

'Install XP on a separate disk to preinstalled Vista for dual boot - with no Vista DVD'

There, I think that says it all. I bought the HP Pavillion dv9000 with Vista preinstalled - no installation CD or anything, just a partition for emergency recovery. Now, I do a lot of music technology and there are so many hardware/software issues regarding audio that I would like to have a seperate XP os to boot into for this purpose.

The question is: can this be done without a Vista installation disc? After all, why would I have the disc when it is preinstalled? And no, I dont want to have to download it from a cheap torrent site.

-I have the second HD for XP-I have my old XP installation disc and registration-I can disable SATA from the BIOS-I can get the XP drivers for the laptop (it used to ship with XP, if I am correct)

Please help, I seem to be spending most of my life trying to configure the damn thing than being productive.

My HP Pavilion that came with Vista, didn't do what my XP did nicely, although with much better hardware. I'm an artist/photographer, now, so mostly use Photoshop and Painter, and preferred XP, which worked nicer with my color management. Here's what I did, and hope this helps anyone else after all the web searching I did and found this entry. Decided to register to post a reply, thinking better late than never.

With the decline in HDD prices, I got a Western Digital 500GB disk to put XP on to dual boot with the existing 500GB Vista. Don't plan on using the WD data Lifeguard software, but you won't need it. The new drive had only the flat SATA for power connection, but the Hitachi it came with had Molex, also for power. Since the PC had only 1 SATA power plug, daisy chained with 2 other molex, I switched them and have both discs together (or you can buy an adapter). You may also need to supply an SATA cable as mine came with none, but WD can tell you from your order number. Now with 2 disks, I booted Vista and using the Disk Management screen (control panel>administrative tools>compuer management>disk management) you can find your blank disk and format it by right clicking on it. Easy enough.

Now boot the XP install CD. This was easy with my BIOS, ESC, for boot device choice.But first, to avoid SATA problems using F10 for SETUP, use the advanced tab and change the SATA property to IDE. LOTS easier than F6 later, and finding the right dr... Read more

I have two drives (C and D) with Vista on one and Win 7 on the other (not sure if they're actual drives or partitions of a single drive, how do I tell?). I am dual booting and never use Vista. Starting to need the disk space and want to delete Vista. Is this difficult in this scenario?

A:Remove Vista from Vista / Win7 Dual Boot - Separate Drives

No, shouldn't be difficult.

Post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management so we can see your setup.

Get to disk management by typing those 2 words into the start button search box.

Just a simple Google gives me hundreds of threads on dual booting Vista and XP, or XP and 98, but I have found none on dual booting Vista and Windows 98SE.

I am currently using a drive with an OS and a Data partition, with Vista as the only OS. I have found that it is a PAIN to run older kid's games in Vista. Many don't work, and many require admin rights to run.

So..I would really like to create a third partition (or use a separate drive) to install Windows 98, and dual boot between Vista and 98. I have the tools to do partitionwork (BootItNG and Partition Magic), but I'd prefer not use these for controlling the dual boot.

Is there a way to install Windows 98 on a third partition or separate drive, next to my existing Vista install, and then use Vista's boot loader to dual boot?

Hey guys, I've been looking through the forum and found some similar posts, but wanted to make sure that I understand everything before actually proceeding. I have a HP HDX 16t which came with Vista Home Premium 64 bit. I used the Windows 7 Upgrade Disk to do a clean install of Win7 on a new partition (I only have one hard drive). I would now like to remove Vista completely. I am attaching a pic of what my Disk Management shows. Thanks in advance for any help.

A:Removing Vista from Dual-Boot System Vista + Windows 7

This great new tutorial from Barefootkid will show you with pictures exactly how to accomplish this using the best partitioning tool for Win7: Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Use Option One in the tutorial and substitute your Vista partition for the 100mb boot partition he refers to there.

Read the Note as once you delete Vista partition then Resize Win7 into its disk space and mark Win7 active, you'll need to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write the System MBR to Win7 and start it up.

Back up your files and a system image externally as Resizing operations can fail although we have not had one fail in a couple hundred of these operations we have helped with here.

I have a Dell XPS 730x with 4 internal harddrives (2 are WD Raptor drives). I'm currently running Vista Home Premium x64 that came with the system on 1 Raptor and want to try Vista Ultimate x64 on the other Raptor. My questions are:

1. Can I do this as long as I can select which drive to boot from without problems with the MBR?

2. If it's not as simple as selecting the boot drive, what software do you recommend to edit the BCD? I know of 2, Easybcd and VistaBootPro.

Thanks in advance for any input,MelH2o

A:Dual Boot Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate?

this does work to dual boot vista, just install ultimate on a second hard drive to be safe

The installation options

You can approach the dual-boot installation operation in one of two ways -- by cold booting from the Windows Vista DVD or by inserting the Windows Vista DVD while Windows XP is running. As you can imagine, you'll encounter slightly different introductory screens depending on which approach you use, but once you get stared the operation is essentially the same. While both methods will produce the same result, I prefer the cold booting from the DVD method. The main reason is that you don't have to worry about any interference from antivirus/antispyware/firewall software on your existing Windows XP installation. Performing the installation

Once you have your second partition or second hard disk operational, just insert your Windows Vista DVD, restart the system, and boot from the DVD. Once the system boots from the DVD, Windows Vista?s Setup will begin loading and will display the screen shown in Figure A. Figure A: Windows Vista?s Setup will take a few moments to load files before the installation actually commences. In a few moments, you?ll see the screen that prompts you to choose the regional and language options, as shown in Figure B. As you can see, the default settings are for U.S. and English and if that?s you, you can just click Next to move on. Figure B: The default settings on the regional and language screen are for the U.S. a... Read more

My approach to backups is obviously different than most users. I have a duplicate hard drive with EasyBCD 1.7.2 [thanks to somebody on this forum] and it has been perfect for 6 months.

On Saturdays, I live copy drive one to drive two and can dual boot to either one. I know that I have a perfectly functioning backup.

Until three nights ago when I installed the Monster MS Office Suite. Since then, drive one wil not boot, and the BCD option does not even appear.

Blinking cursor from hell.

So, in CMOS, I swamped drive sequence to boot to drive two first. Works perfectly, and I can select drive one which works perfectly. But oddly enough, now it will not allow me to boot to drive two.

Inside Easy BCD, I try to 'add' the second drive [which is F] but it pops U into the box. I don't have a U drive, and it does not work.

So, i "think" this is a BCD problem, but can't get it to show my bootable drives, C and F.

A:Dual boot Vista/Vista amd Easy BCD1.7.2

What happens when you boot the second drive? I haven't used EasyBCD since I learned how to use the command prompt for this stuff. You can't edit it so that the second drive is F? I remember being able to do that.

New laptop has Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I have two business programs that won't run on a 64bit system. Partitioned the hard drive to install Vista Home Premium 32bit to create a dual boot system solely to run these two programs.

Can't get Vista to load. Followed tutorial meticulously. All goes fine until the "Vista will boot for the first time" step. After this first boot, the screen returns to the "completing installation" page. However, the process dies here and the progress bar across the bottom of the screen never moves, even after an hour. Reformatted the partition and started over with same results. Multiple attempts always die after the first boot.

What gives? This is very exasperating. This should not be this hard.

A:Win 7 & Vista Dual Boot Installation - Vista Won't Load

Where did you get Vista? Check if the disk is dirty and clean it. If you burned it yourself, Verify DVD using IMgBurn. Load ISO in to make sure it says "Bootable" in text at left, then load DVD and Verify against ISO. Burn another DVD at 4x speed.

Are you running the Vista installer from Win7 or booting it? Try the other way.

Hi, as most who sign up. I've been a long time lurker (using the forum to find solutions to help others as I didn't use 7 myself). So first a big thanks to all contributors Now I'm finally at a point where XP just doesn't cut it any longer. I installed Vista 32 bit because I had a licence that I hadn't used in years (old OEM from a laptop, phone activated without problems on the desktop)... anyway I wanted a proper Win 7 64 bit, and now I have it .

Question:I am now dual booting XP and Vista. XP is on the first HDD and Vista on the second.I want to install 7 and wipe out Vista.Can I just start the Windows 7 installation and let it wipe out Vista by selecting to use the whole disk that Vista is on, or do I need to... fixmbr, format Vista HD and then install Windows 7?

A:XP/Vista dual boot. Install 7, kick out Vista. How to?

Quote: Originally Posted by Chakonari

Hi, as most who sign up. I've been a long time lurker (using the forum to find solutions to help others as I didn't use 7 myself). So first a big thanks to all contributors Now I'm finally at a point where XP just doesn't cut it any longer. I installed Vista 32 bit because I had a licence that I hadn't used in years (old OEM from a laptop, phone activated without problems on the desktop)... anyway I wanted a proper Win 7 64 bit, and now I have it .

Question:I am now dual booting XP and Vista. XP is on the first HDD and Vista on the second.I want to install 7 and wipe out Vista.Can I just start the Windows 7 installation and let it wipe out Vista by selecting to use the whole disk that Vista is on, or do I need to... fixmbr, format Vista HD and then install Windows 7?

It can be even simpler than that:Shut down the computerDisconnect the Vista driveTurn it back on and boot to the Windows 7 DVDInstall using the "Custom (advanced)" type of installationWhen you get to the part where you can select the XP drive, click "Drive options (advanced)".In this order, click Delete, New, Format and then NextWhen you finally get to the Desktop after the installation, shut downReconnect the Vista driveTurn the computer on and go directly into the BIOSMake sure the Windows 7 drive is the first in the boot prioritySave and Exit

Hi everyone! I have heard that there are many driver problems in Windows Vista. A friend of mine has a laptop with Vista Home Premium and it can not read CDs and DVDs! The laptop is bought last week! I have Windows XP SP2 and I am thinking about getting it transformed into ..."Vista", but I fear possible CPU problems. It is not a good idea, is it? But there is another choice: dual-boot XP and Vista. So, I made this poll for you to help me, if you want. Which choice is better? Thanks!

A:Windows Vista, Vista Emulator Or Dual Boot?

That would depend entirely on your system...For example how much RAM do you have installed? What type of processor do you have? How new is your system (older systems don't handle Vista well)? Whether you are able to get compatible drivers for all of your printers and other goodies that will work for both Vista and XP (if going to try Dual-Boot). There are a lot of things to consider.

I have just taken delivery of a brand new fully loaded beast running Vista Home Premium 64bit. All is wonderful...except I have one critical piece of application software that wont run on a 64bit OS.

Fortunately I have Vista Ultimate SP1 32bit that was installed on my recently deceased laptop (originally the laptop came with XP). So in theory I have everything I need to set up a dual booting PC but I am unclear as how to do this.

Is there an idiots guide anywhere around for Vista 64 and Vista 32 dual boots? Seen plenty of XP and Vista suggestions but will the same process work?

Or are there better solutions to my problem?

Paul.

A:Dual Boot - Vista 64bit and Vista 32bit - How?

yes it is the same process, but in your case since it is already installed on both you will need a boot manager.

at first i only had xp on my machine then one day i decided to try to dual boot it with vista x64. and i found that vista x64 was great. so i decided to remove all os and clean install my vista x64 on my machine but then when i tried to boot up. it boots slower compared to the time when i dual boot xp with vista. my welcome screen loads slower. is there any prob? or is it really like this.? thnx and sorry for my english.

I've been looking around for a good tutorial or something like that on how to delete vista from my computer.Some say that when i would just delete the partition my w7 won't start up again. Can someone make a tutorial where everything is explained well, or just answer here?This is how my disk management looks atm:Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I think i changed the "active" to where w7 is installed, and also the start up and system.. So you think i can just delete the partitione?

I was running Vista Ultimate 32 with no problems. I load Vista Ultmate 64 on a seperate Raid array, but it would only install after I removed 2 of the 4 GB Memory. After the install, I tried booting into Vista 64 with all 4 GB but get blue screens. Another problem is that if I want to boot into Vista 32, I have to physically disconnect the Vista 64 Hard drives.

I have a q6600 2 500gb Hd's SATA-3, and an 8800 with 2gb's of ram. My system has changed since I last updated my signature.

If I cannot dual boot with x64 then ultimate and premium would be fine. I've been looking everywhere for a tutorial but have been unable to find it. I had not trouble dual booting vista and xp but now have become stuck with vista and vista.

I have a Pavilion Elite (2X300 GB HDD) with Vista Home Premium pre-loaded and want to install Ultimate as well (kinda like jayrod). Any pointers to instructions would be useful!

A:Dual Boot Vista w/vista

Quote:

Originally Posted by jayrodathome

couldn't get it to work. the bootmgr is different in the 64 bit I guess and I couldn't figure out how to get the option after post. So I'm just dual booting ultimate and home premium. I'm using them seperatly one for work and one for play. that way I can keep the resources down on my gaming system and run whatever I want at once on my work system all on the same pc.

thanks for the interest.

Did you create a partition to install the second Vista on? If not it seems it would just install over your current, and make a Windows.old folder.

K so i got one sata hd @ 500gb split into four drives C drive holds windows XP (main op sys) E drive i play around with various op sys and at the minute ive given vista another go so vista is on E. I have all my games installed to drive D (installed thro XP drive C) and wonder if i can play them from vista (drive E) by somehow writing the files to the E registry without installing them again. I havnt the space to reinstall everything and would love it if i could run all my games from both ops sys without the install space being needed twice. Do i just install from vista to the D drive over whats there already (but backup all my save data) or will will this kill my XP installed game data.
Explained this the best hope someone u/s what i mean

A:Dual booting vista/xp can i share the installed games

they have to be reinstall. in addition you need to read their eula to see if you can legally have two installs of the the same game.

well i have a very simple problem, i bought an alienware pc about 3 months ago i put in it as much hardware as i could afford, i ended up with an intel 2.66 ghz quad, 2 geforce 8800 gtx, 4 gig of ram, a 500 gig boot mirror raid and a 250 gig storage mirror raid.Because most of my programs only run on xp i payed a little extra to have it with xp... yes it actually cost more!

and here is where the nature of my problem is... as it happens 32 bit OS's cant allocate more than 3 gigs of ram including video ram... so right now i'm only using 2.5 gigs of ram and 500mb of video ram... which is less than half of what i actually payed for

so naturally i need to install windows vista 64 bit... but i want to dual boot it with xp, i've read loads of tutorials on dual booting xp and vista on partitions and separate drives and it all seems very straight forward, but they never mention tackling dual boot on separate raids.what sort of problems can i expect with this setup?? will i need to install raid drivers for vista?? will i need to unplug the raid where xp is installed?? will the processor even be able to run at 64 bit??

I'll start from the beginning. Put together a computer of spare parts from old pc's neither of which are very old. Everything works fine, I installed vista only to find out nvidia doesn't support nforce2 for vista. I couldn't get my mouse or audio to work, only keyboard. XP drivers for nforce2 wouldn't work on vista. So I formatted my partition and began to instal a fresh copy of windows xp everything was fine until computer restarted and now the computer hangs at boot. shows graphics card information then hangs after showing Main Processor: AMD athlon 2800+. It wont boot and I cant get into bios to even boot from cd or anything. I know enough to be dangerous, not the tech savy individual. NEED HELP

A:installed vista didnt like, installed xp but hangs at boot

is there any jumpers i can connect or something of the sort to reset the hard drive...

My PC come with vista64bit, may registered it ? by this way I get free Email support on windows & networking PCs in windows FROM MICROSOFT ? including setting up wireless and wired networks via ADSL MODEMS ?

I have dual boot PC [VISTA 32BIT & 64BIT]: The below hardware does not function in 64bit but no problem at 32bit[drivers in device manager appear with a yellow icon-explanation mark] is needed drivers only ? I must register all products and after registration-success seek for drivers ? I must download drivers [since ethernet card/internet do not work in 64bit] from 32bit, save on HDD and after boot from 64bit, run them ? Is needed restart after each installation, or after all installation is ok ?

If anyone out there can please offer some guidance it would be appreciated & I will take you to dinner if your in the tri-state area!

My Dad passed... When he did he was having problems booting up his computer wich is dual boot (xp/vista32) on one drive ide I believe haven't taken a close look at that drive, plus four other sata drives set in a raid array If I recall this is a raid 10 setup??? Anyway windows downloaded an update for his graphics card. since then the compute goes through the initial boot, identifies all hardwae and then stops at a prompt, it does not go to the windows boot menu nor does any windows flash graphic come up. Instead it hangs at a dead cursor where nothing can be typed in. His graphics card is an asus card with an ati chipset and dual monitors installed. All I want to get at is documents and pictures. To add another twist, the 4 Sata drives are partioned into at minimum 15 virtual drives. He was a Dr. and had things scattered all over for legal, personal, trading, patient, insurance, ect... Hence the number of vitual drives.

The big question is, can I run a vista rescue disk or recovery disc to boot it into windows? Or am I going to lose the XP info or all for that matter?

HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.... I do fairly well with computers and have building/repairing my own since college (1989..am I that old?). My dad was a fanatic with them so he buuilt a new one every year I got out of and when it's too slow I move... Read more

I have a dual boot vista/kbuntu system. I was using windows and was running low of space on my c drive so I thought to compress it.

Upon completion I re-booted my system to only be made aware og the error message that my Windows Boot Files were compressed and so windows could not be booted.

I have some questions relating to this issue for which any knowledgeable input would be greatly appreciated.

1. Why has Microsoft imposed no safety mechanism or warning upon compressing the c drive if this is the result of the action?

2. Why can compressed boot files be booted? This may be a stupid question but I would like to understand.

3. I have been reading on the web for possible solutions to this problem. The most common seems to be to insert the original OS vista cd, boot from it and click repair. I have my vista system set up perfect in terms of programs and data. Will the repair operation preserve this state?

4.Using the CD method above is there any means to uncompress only the boot files and not the whole of the c drive so I can still achieve my original goal of space savings?

5. My system is dual boot. I can stilll load Kbuntu and access my NTFS c drive on the kbuntu desktop. I can even see the specific windows boot files folder. I am new to linux but tried to adopt a windows seasoned approach of right clicking the boot files folder and going into properties and looking for uncompress option there. Suprise suprise no such option there. But since my system... Read more

A:Uncompressing Windows Boot Files in Vista and Kbuntu Dual Boot

It would be useful to know the exact mechanism you used to enact the compression, the extent of what you compressed, as well as the actual error message you now see when trying to boot into Windows.

Okay so I didn't screw up everything, but I can't get my boot menu situation straight. I have a dual boot of windows xp pro and windows vista business. I used EasyBCD to edit my boot menu, this way my boot menu listed Windows XP and Windows Vista and it would default to Windows XP. The problem now is that I can access F8 options on windows vista, but not on windows xp. I messed around with my boot.ini for xp, but can't get it to do what i want it to do.

This is all you should need to start XP. I suggest lowering the "timeout" to 3 or less. To access your F8 options you should do so immediately after starting the XP-os. (right after this "boot loader" processes.)

Yeah I went and did something stupid. -.- I had a dual boot of Vista/Ubuntu and I deleted the Ubuntu partition in vista and rebooted the comp before correcting the Boot menu. So now when I re-start I get this:

Loading GRUB stage 1.5

Loading...Error 22_

I have run just about every test I know of. I'm running a Vista home on a Dell XPS 410.I've already ran chkdsk, all of Dell's utilities, Windows Vista Startup Repair, etc.Can someone help please?

EDIT: Would fdisk /mbr correct my problem?

Okay now I understand what the problem is. The GRUB is looking for a partition that is not there, and the binary isn't matching up. I'm at work right now so I have no way to test to fix it. I just want to make sure I know how before I head home.

Options:fdisk /mbrFIXBOOTFIXMBR

I think bootrec.exe /fixmbr and /fixboot will correct my issue. I would like to run it by you guys first.

I installed Windows 7 on a partitioned harddrive with vista on the other half.

After the installation i have my boot menu with:
Windows 7
Windows Vista

Windows vista still works but when i try and load windows 7 i get a boot error message:

FILE \windows\system32\winload.exe

Status: 0xc0000428

info: windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling a number of times, trying the 32 and 64 bit version, and setting the partition to active... with zero results. Ive been googling my problem for days and haven't found a single thing that has been useful. Please help me out if you have heard of this problem happening or have any idea why it is happening.
Please get back to me.

I already have 2 partitions, c: and d:, on my recently purchased acer vista premium ready laptop that came with Window Media Center. I am able to get the free express upgrade since i bought my computer recently. I want to play around with vista before i decide to fully have it. Can i do the vista express upgrade on to my d: drive and tell my computer to boot that instead of the XP on c: (i'm assuming)? That way, i can play with vista and if i don't like it i can delete the vista on d: while my xp is just chilling on the c: drive and i can go back to xp.

I'm reluctant to get vista because of problems like itunes not working and corrupting the ipod and the vista's DRM?

Stating the questions i have again:1. Can i do the dual boot with the free vista express upgrade on the D: partition?(with the master/slave thing perhaps) and keep my xp on C:2. Would i be able to delete either xp or vista when i decide which one i want?3. What are your thoughts on vista's DRM (Digital Rights Movement i think)?I want all my music and movies to be able to play on vista.

thanks guys!

A:Xp And Vista Dual Boot?

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!

ACER LAPTOPS AND DESKTOPS

Typically come with a RECOVERY partition. DO NOT DELETE AT THIS POINT.If you are able to CREATE RESTORES (Set of OEM Specific RESTORES Including your OS; XP in this Case)

CREATE your restores CD's/DVD's Before even thinking about installing VISTA or deleting the RESTORE partition for that matter.

Secondly, You would have to Install PLAIN Copies of XP First, and then Vista PROPER.Vista would not handle the Original Restore Partition well.

YOU HAVE TO BACK UP YOUR DATA TO SOMETHING OTHER THAN THAT MACHINE'S HARDDRIVE.

For the Dual Boot, get a copy of Partition Magic (Symantec) Or Partition Commander and Repartition your HDD. If you have a plain Retail copy of XP, then install that first, then install VISTA.

Keep in mind that this process will NOT Allow you to install all of the Free Acer APPS. That may actually be a good thing. You'll have to get drivers from ACER's Website.

Although it's a possibility that you have to Physical HDD's it is not likely in this case. So MASTER/SLAVE "THINGY" is irrelevant.

Finally, DRM is OK if you have completley Legal Music, which all of us should have *wink*If you're concerned about DRM Screwing with your Music, Save the Music somewhere on the XP Partition and don't access that music from within VISTA. AT ALL. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

DRM is so the Industry has a way to keep you from stealing and selling pirated Music. Now who would do such a thing?It can be ... Read more

I have OEM version of XP Pro on my pc. I'd like to get the OEM version of Vista and clean install to another partition to have a dual boot configuration. Will that work? It's not supposed to if it's an upgrade version of Vista since that deactivates XP, but what if it is a OEM version of Vista?

Now the tough part. Let's say it does let me. Will it then let me activate/re-activate/etc both Vista and XP say when my hard drive craps out and I have to reinstall them? This just happened to me with only XP and when I went to reactivate I had to call a MS phone number to do so. It was pretty easy, but I'm wondering if that would have been so in a dual boot with both OEM of Vista and XP?

Well if someone has done so please let me know. I could only hope. So let the conjecture begin.

Hey guys I originally had Vista Business edition on my laptop and decided to dual boot with XP. So far I created a partition on the same drive (C: ) as Vista and installed XP on it. Now my question is how do I choose between Vista and XP when my computer boots up? When I turn on my computer it boots straight into XP and doesn't show that menu where it gives me a choice of which OS I want to boot.